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This is is amazing, and very welcome, news. It would be too much to expect our vaunted--but homophobic--U.S. medical research system and its funders (mostly our wonderful government) to have come up with this. Watch: It will be now be an immense struggle to have the test approved for use here by the F.D.A., let alone approved for coverage by our insurance companies.

P.S. A big shout-out and thank you is due England's Peter Tatchell, who pressed for years to see this happen. In so many ways he is perhaps one of the greatest and most important international gay leaders of our time.

« Last Edit: November 06, 2008, 07:23:56 AM by edfu »

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"No one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences."--Albert Camus, "The Plague"

"Mankind can never be free until the last brick in the last church falls on the head of the last priest."--Voltaire

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

"Get your medical advice from Doctors or medical professionals who you trust and know your history."

"Beware of the fortune teller doom and gloomers who seek to bring you down and are only looking for company, purpose and validation - not your best physical/mental interests."

"You know you all are saying that this is incurable. When the real thing you should be saying is it's not curable at the present time' because as we know, the great strides we've made in medicine." - Elizabeth Edwards

Any specifics on which countries actually offer this testing, now? "The MRC news release explains that the new screening procedure looks for MCMs, or "minichromosome maintenance proteins," naturally-occurring proteins that appear in tissues where cancerous and pre-cancerous cells are present."thanks

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“From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need” 1875 K Marx

Hi Ed. Thank you. I bet England will permit any man to get this test regardless of a man's age. Here in New York City there seems to be some sort of rule about men under 55 yrs of age can not get tested under Medicaid or some nonsense. (Someone please give me the precise rules if you know. Thanks) That said, I smell an American rat (a health insurance industry rat). I remember a super rude colo rectal specialist in my hospital blurted out to me in an **EXTREMELY** rude tone : "You're not over 50, you don't need a colonoscopy." What a prick!! Our meeting wasn't even 10 seconds old when he said that to me. To top it off he even ran my Medicaid card through a machine (a billing machine I assume) after providing virtually NO CARE. What a travesty of statefunded health care. He rushed me out before I could ask serious health questions. The other rude question he barked was "Why would you even think you have HPV?" I was flabbergasted. I mean, I think it's semi-obvious I'm a gay man . I should have cited the study and said the rate is 37 out of 100,000 gay men get anal cancer and for poz gay men the risk is double. And yes, from the starting gate I told this prick doctor about me being poz. The bottom line was this doctor's attitude toward me was atrocious and methinks was a bigtime HOMOPHOBE.

I don't know what the Medicaid rules are, but you should know that there is extreme controversy in the U.S. medical establishment about the effectiveness of anal pap tests in diagnosing potential anal cancer. As I have posted elsewhere on this site, my own ID doctor--a prominent HIV specialist in NYC, and gay himself--told me anal pap tests were useless, and the labs couldn't or wouldn't do them. When he discovered anal warts during an annual digital prostate exam a year ago, he referred me to a proctologist associated with St. Vincent's Hospital--prominent for its AIDS care from the very beginning of the epidemic--and he told me the same thing. (I have been celibate for over 20 years and never suffered from anal warts during my active sexual period.) I referred both of them to the research done by Dr. Joel Palefsky in San Francisco and Dr. Stephen Goldstone in NYC--to no avail. The proctologist did peform an anoscopy, a "miniature" version of a colonoscopy, and did discover internal warts as well as external warts. He removed all of them but still would not consider a pap test. He wanted me to come back for further anoscopies, which I did, and I was clear.

When I went on Medicare--I am now 66--I had him perform a colonoscopy, which I had never had done. He discovered two more internal benign warts. (Medicare will cover a colonoscopy every two years in a high-risk situation, which anal warts warrant. Otherwise, it covers a colonoscopy only every ten years[!].) However, the colonoscopy itself does not guarantee that I have no potential anal-cancer lesions.

Anal warts are the primary sign of HPV infection. HPV infection is a primary indicator of potential anal cancer. As you are perfectly aware--and the doctors are not--gay and HIV are further potential signifiers of anal cancer. The colorectal specialist you saw should at least have examined you for anal warts.

Bottom line: It is obvious that this situation regarding anal cancer, HIV, and a pap test--or any kind of test--is one that we must organize and fight for. It is exactly analogous to the early years of the epidemic, when we had to organize and fight for the recognition of Bactrim as a prophylactic for PCP pneumonia. As an old-timer at this, I can tell you that that simple remedy was not automatic and required a great deal of activism. (You may not remember that, initially, the only prophylaxis for PCP was aerosolized Pentamidine, which did not work very well at all.)